 All right, good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us. I want to welcome you all virtually to the United States Institute of Peace. My name is Jake Stokes, and I'm a senior policy analyst in the China program here at the Institute. I'll serve as the moderator for today's event. Last month, Chinese and Indian troops came to blows in their deadliest border incident since 1967. Clashes culminated on June 15th with the death of 20 Indian troops and an unconfirmed number of Chinese troops. The Indian and Chinese governments have provided a few details about exactly what happened along the disputed boundary. The two countries appears to have stabilized the situation by starting a disengagement process. But unlike prior dust-ups, this unexpected and deadly turn could signal a lasting shift in relations between the two Asian giants. Specifically, the episode raises questions about whether India and China can return to the tense but mostly stable status quo ante at the border, how the standoff might reverberate elsewhere in the sign of Indian relationship, and how Chinese behavior toward India fits into Beijing's increasingly assertive, and some might even say aggressive pattern of foreign policy in its neighborhood and beyond. There've already been a number of useful think tank events held in analytical pieces written on the complex geography of the area and the tactical and operational details of events on the ground. Several of the best were written by our panelists with us here today, but we won't recreate those. Instead, today's event will try to take a wider view and consider how recent developments will shape the big geopolitical trends in Asia. To discuss these topics, we're delighted to have with us today a stellar set of panelists who I'll just introduce briefly so we can maximize the amount of time we get to hear from them. First, we have Dr. Tanvi Madan. Tanvi is a senior fellow in the project on international order and strategy in the foreign policy program and director of the India project at the Brookings Institution. She is the author of the recent fantastic book, Faithful Triangle, How China Shaked US-India Relations During the Cold War. Next, we have Dr. Taylor Fravel. Taylor is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and director of the Security Studies program at MIT. His most recent book is Active Defense, China's Military Strategy since 1949. And pertinent to this discussion, Taylor also wrote what has become the classic study on China's handling of territorial disputes titled Strong Borders, Secure Nation. Finally, we have Vikram Singh. Vikram is a senior advisor in the Asia Center here at USIP, where he works on a range of issues related to peace and stability in Asia. In addition to his research work, he has had a distinguished career in the US government, including tours at the departments of state and defense. Most recently, he was deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, just the department's top official focused on the region. All right, so here's the plan for how we'll proceed. I will pose questions to the panelists for the first 45 minutes or so of the event and then take questions from the audience online. You can tweet your questions to us using the hashtag India, China, USIP, or you can write your questions in the box you should be able to see on your screen. And with that, we'll jump right into it. I'll direct each question to one of the panelists, but I invite the others to jump in if they have thoughts as well and we'll try to make this a conversation. Tom V, let's start with you. Given recent events, what are the prospects for a more permanent resolution of the Sino-Indian border dispute? And I guess more specifically, what are the principles analysts have proposed for some sort of resolution and the sort of relative interest on each side to get there? And perhaps more broadly, is this even something that's worth talking about or is it simply too far out of reach? Thanks, Jake. I think at the moment the immediate focus is still on kind of disengagement and de-escalation and that process is still ongoing. And I think the broader conversation of where this goes in terms of the boundary resolution, in terms of resetting the relationship will depend on how this process evolves more broadly and also kind of the broader impact that this might be having on the China-India relationship. I think what you've seen broadly from the two sides are statements emerging from China and India that suggest somewhat different goals at the moment with China kind of talking about a restoration of the China-India relationship while India has been talking about the restoration of the status quo ante and where the situation at the boundary lay in at the end of April before the standoff itself started. I think to the extent that Indian officials have mentioned the broader relationship, they have mentioned that, look, these what they have called unprecedented developments are gonna have a serious impact. That's something the foreign minister said on the broader relationship. And there is a sense in India, this is not quite not surprising that India is focused very much on the boundary and thinks this might adversely affect the broader relationship. It's not surprising because I think India believes that the Chinese have violated the architecture, the kind of agreements, there's a whole set of agreements, protocols and mechanisms that were designed essentially to do three things. One was to ensure that there would be peace and tranquility at the boundary and resolve any kind of disputes that came out. Second, that it would facilitate a broader resolution as you talked about, a more permanent resolution of the boundary. And third, these architectural agreements and protocols and mechanisms were supposed to allow the rest of the relationship, the economic side, cooperation, global governance issues, et cetera, to proceed and not be kind of bogged down in terms of the political strains they had on the boundary. And so, if the Indians are thinking that this set of agreements has been violated, that's gonna affect how they feel about trying to resolve this issue more broadly. Now, these agreements did offer and this architecture is what is being used to disengage and de-escalate. But I think they also did offer and still do in some sense as the mechanisms for that permanent resolution you asked about. On the one hand, there's a special representative's mechanism, which is at the national security advisor level on the Indian side, and Yang Jiechi is the representative on the Chinese side. And they've met 22 times in part to try to find a broader resolution. It hasn't really gone very far. The second thing that people have proposed that short of that, then in the meantime, there have been a proposal to demarcate the line of actual control, particularly in the Western sector. There's I think about 16 different points where there are points of dispute. And the country's considered it particularly important for the two sides as both sides have been upgrading their infrastructure and their sides of the line of actual control, that their troops were gonna bump into each other a lot more often as they patrol. They just had more access to this area. And so it was considered particularly important to try to kind of stabilize the situation there. And there was agreement at one point to begin the process to clarify the line of actual control, but it's essentially been stalled since 2002. More recently, Prime Minister Modi has brought it up multiple times, but the Chinese have not shown interest. Why? One view is that the Chinese concern it'll prejudice their broader claims. And another view is that the Chinese like the ambiguity. So they can actually make such moves and kind of extend their claims. The focus has largely been on the Western sector. The Eastern sector is more kind of settled. Western sector is the way Ladakh where these incidents are taking place has been considered more critical by Beijing. And it's also kind of got this problem of not being as being marketed. I will say just in terms of the last thing I'll say is in terms of the way forward, now you could see at least two different ways this can turn out. There's a third, which is things can go really awry and the situation could escalate into conflict. But the two more kind of plausible, I would say, though you never know with escalation is the one this essentially falls into a more kind of contentious adversarial relationship where there's just a lower level of trust than there has been for the last 20 odd years. The second is the possibility that just like after a boundary standoff that occurred in the 80s between China and India, that it actually leads the two countries to say, look, we need to actually figure out a way to resolve this. That 80s crisis led to a visit by the first and prime minister to visit Beijing after the 1962 war. And this architecture being set up of agreements. The problem this time is somewhat different, I think, is that there's very little trust. So even if you come to a set of agreements, the question is the Indian side will say at least, even if we reach an agreement, will the Chinese respect it? I think there's another aspect, which is Modi is being criticized at home for depending on personal diplomacy with Xi Jinping to try to keep the border stable. And people are drawing comparisons to Prime Minister Nehru's personal diplomacy with drone landing, that didn't work either. So I think it is going to be a little bit tougher to get back to normal, so to speak, and get, but one thing that might make this plausible is if any leader could do it, it is Prime Minister Modi, just because he does have a public backing. Great, thanks, Sami. Taylor, I want to move to you. Can you talk a little bit about to what degree is escalation on the sign of Indian border part of sort of a larger pattern of Chinese assertiveness and its periphery, and to what extent does Beijing think of the China-India border on its own terms versus part of kind of more of an overall pattern in Asia? Great, yeah, thanks, Jake. It's a really great pleasure to be here. So clearly this spring, right, there has been a pattern of Chinese assertiveness in pretty much every issue relating to its territorial integrity or sovereignty as contested with other states. And so one looks at activity in the South China Sea with all of the claimants there and the East China Sea with Japan, Chinese military activity around Taiwan, the National Security Law in Hong Kong, and so on up to and including other border with India. So there's no doubt, right, there's been a real push on sovereignty this spring. And the big question is to what degree is this related sort of stemming from some common taproot of concern and to what degree are there different challenges in these areas that China is seeking to manage? I think sort of really bleeds into the second part of your question, which is just to say, I think on the China-India border, certainly there are things that do concern China. And so if one tries to sort of spin a counter back to this was 2019 instead of 2020 and all of the events that may have been motivating China happened then with China still have acted on the border, my sense is yes, because if we look over the last decade starting in, and I think as Tommy mentioned, the earlier incidents on the border in 2013 and 2014, like there've been growing tension between China and India, there's also been a sort of a steady increase in the activity and presence of troops from both sides along the line of actual control, particularly in the Western sector. If you look at a chart and sort of what India views as transgressions or moments when Chinese forces crossed, what India views to be the line of actual control. I mean, it's really rapidly increased over the last decade and the bulk of those have occurred in the Western sector. And I won't sort of review really all the reasons that I think led China to this point except to note briefly, right? That China learned one lesson from Doplam in 2017 that perhaps it needed to pay much more attention to India on the border than it had in the past and sort of be prepared to deal with what it viewed then as an Indian provocation. You had the creation of Ladakh as a federally administered union territory in the summer of 2019. And then all of the sort of infrastructure improvements I think really shaped a sort of Chinese perceptions and probably played a role in what they decided to do this spring. And so in that sense, I think there are definitely specific drivers of one can point to, but the broader context would be that China firstly has just adopted what I call much more strident stance to sovereignty under Xi Jinping. And we've seen this in all of the outstanding territorial disputes. And this was sort of on sort of wide display in the spring of 2020. The second element would be here that I think there's some link between the pandemic on the one hand and China's sort of sensitivity to sovereignty challenges on the other hand. And this idea when it's facing sort of a rapid decline in ties with the United States amid the pandemic, when it's dealing with culpability for the outbreak of the pandemic in the international community. And it's when it's dealing with your economic challenges that can't sort of afford to have any losses in these disputes over sovereignty that Xi Jinping is really linked to achievement of the China dream. And so I think that explains also why we see sort of a much broader push that China has made around its periphery in the last six months. If I can, I just want to add one thing on to what Tommy said in the spirit of having a conversation, which is I've come to the conclusion that the 93 and 96 agreements are just outdated, right? Because they were drafted at a time when there may have been a line of actual control that the two countries couldn't access it very frequently. And even when they could access it, they would barely come into contact with each other. So you might have had, you know, controls on a weekly basis for something like that. And now both sides, you know, China first in Benin just caught up or is catching up happy ability to, you know, they built roads to these areas, they built port posts, they have airfields and it sets a very different situation. So I think one way forward, and I hope it's the 86, 87 model and not the 58 to 62 model would be to think about what kind of agreement is needed now to take into account the fact that the situation along the line of actual control on both sides is fundamentally different than when these agreements were reached. I think they're sort of outlines I could think about and I will dwell on them now but happy to come back to it later. But I think that's one thing that's worth sort of probing is, you know, do we go back to where we were before with these agreements or do we think about kind of new measures that could be put in place to help bring stability and prevent another outbreak or another escalation situation that we're likely saw in the evening of June 15th. Many thanks. Hey, if I could, in the spirit of conversation again, if I could just jump in with that, maybe a question to both of you. One thing I've heard from some folks I've talked to in India was a sort of a notion that, hey, maybe these agreements we've had with the Chinese from our end were designed to do a certain set of things up to and including giving us the mechanisms for resolving the underlying disputes eventually over time. But maybe the Chinese really just viewed it as a holding process, a lot more like the Declaration of Conduct or Code of Conduct with South China Sea claimants that they're not actually interested in that broader objective. So while, yes, these tactical changes are very significant. It used to take multiple weeks to get forces into some of these places that can now be accessed in 24 or 36 hours by road and immediately by air. That's all true. But one of the questions is, have the two countries always had a different vision of what was possible or what the desired outcome was from having the mechanisms that were put in place over the past 20 years? I mean, I think it's, there's things that have changed in the last few years is one of those things that Jail pointed out, which is, you've seen now, this is the fourth boundary standoff or the military standoff because the 2017 one involved with Mies and Chinese disputed territory. But this is the fourth such incident since 2013. What are the two things that have changed since then? One is Xi Jinping's been in power and second is, as Taylor mentioned, these countries just have an ability to operate in these areas in 2013, 2014 and this one have all been in the Western sector in a way they have ability to operate there in a way that they didn't. So I think, you know, there are some things that have made it different now. I think I can understand that people are now seeing the whole kind of set of, incident, you know, the whole kind of set of agreements from this perspective now, just because, you know, tempers are high to some extent and people are questioning and it reflects the lack of trust now. And I think that's going to be a serious problem. There is no trust right now in that process. But I do think, you know, if you look back when these sets of agreements put into place, I think, you know, neither country, for example, wanted war. Both countries did want to actually focus on development. But what has, what is the other thing that has changed since that time? In 1988 and in, well, 1988, the Indian Foreign Minister just pointed out yesterday the Chinese and Indian economies were around the same size. Now the power differential and not just economic but across the board has changed considerably just in the economic sense, in the economic size. You've seen kind of China's economy about four and a half, five times India's size. Now, sometimes it's about kind of ambitions changing. Sometimes it's about possibilities. You see different possibilities, but it could also be about insecurities increasing in a weird way. And so I, you know, I think it's, we can look back once this situation is resolved to see what the intentions were. But I don't think we have enough to know right now that, yes, goals might have been different that both sides have had different ideas of when they want to resolve the situation, how they want to resolve the boundary dispute. But I think, you know, there was both sides had an incentive to build these agreements over 20 years because, you know, for the Chinese side, I can see, look, there are bigger problems at hand mostly to the East. Why would you wanna start, you know, kind of go into a conflict with India at the time? Thank you, yeah. Tommy, I wonder if I could draw you out on something you mentioned earlier, which is sort of the changing political incentives for Indian leadership in relations with China. For Indian Prime Minister Modi, what's the political logic of maintaining good ties with China and how are the incentives sort of shifting? And were they, I suppose, you know, you have these two informal summits and Wuhan and Chennai and that would, you know, you have this kind of overall positive vision. Was, did that ever have any substance to it? But also, will another one of those be possible or useful, seen as possible and useful in Indian politics going forward? I mean, I think, you know, on the one hand, if you think about the two major parties, the BJP, the ruling party, the Congress party that led a coalition government prior to 2014 for about 10 years, in both sides have essentially followed, you know, they always say they're different, but they've essentially followed the same kind of approach to China, which is kind of engaging China, trying to kind of, you know, stabilize the relationship, both to actually benefit from it, but also to keep it from preventing India from focusing on other goals, whether security or economic or social. And so you see, and that's been one leg. And then both sides have actually focused also on competing with China. And that aspect has included internal balancing, building Indian capabilities, you know, the kind of some of the major effort to kind of restart this infrastructure upgradeation at the boundary we started by the previous government. And then also kind of focus on external balancing, which is building this network of partners that includes the US, but Japan and others as well. So the approach has been broadly, now what you have seen though, is politics being politics and a democracy. Right now both sides on each side is competing to assert that they had been tougher on China and the other side did not do enough. And Congress is going further, it's accusing the Modi government of playing down the seriousness of the PLA's steps to protect his image as a strong man, so to speak. But so far what we've seen is a broad layer rallying around the flag effect in India. I do think though, you know, there is going to be, there has been an impact on perceptions. Now whether or not it constrains any Indian government's hands down the line, I think remains to be seen, but we have seen an impact of a kind of an adverse impact on the Indian perceptions at the government level, at the elite level, at the public level towards China. And I think the June 15 incident, yes, but the boundary standoffs been going on since early May. And I would say that some of this kind of downturn and perceptions of China actually started, came from COVID. That had already been reinforcing kind of the competitive and side of the India-China relationship. So I think, you know, you have seen a hardening of views and I think it's been particularly striking on the public side where, you know, you kind of seen the kind of anti-China sentiment you usually see it's gone mainstream in a way that's usually reserved for Pakistan. And that is actually problematic in terms of thinking about what you could do in the future. So, you know, could Modi do one of these summits? Yes, but there will be a lot of, there will be a lot of, you know, questions about it and he'll be taking a risk because if it, if there's another incident after that and something that's perhaps even more serious, that will really impact the way that the Indian public sees his kind of, you know, strongman image which he's actually used to his benefit. So I think you have seen that hardening of views just to give you kind of one incident. You've heard of kind of a restaurant called Mainland China thinking about changing their name to Mainland Asia because people are feeling that badly towards China. More worrisome, I think, if I was China is that there's been impact on policies, particularly economic policies and technology policies that the Indian government, now how far this impact goes, I think will depend on whether or not such a kind of summit will be possible. I think will depend on how this crisis evolves, its duration and its eventual outcome. I think if there's a restoration of status quo anti that does actually give Modi more space than if India doesn't find that outcome forthcoming. Great. Vikram, I wanna if I can turn to you and just talk a little bit about the, how this is being interpreted in US policy circles. Can you talk a little bit about how a change in the frequency or the intensity of Sino-Indian border clashes might affect US policy? At its most basic level, should we worry more about India-China now than we do India-Pakistan or at least as much? And also how does the India-China friction affect the India-Pakistan conflict? Great, Jake, thanks and Taylor and Tanvi it's so great to be on a Zoom forum with you guys. Look, I think first of all, for the last two decades really US policy has been focusing on India kind of in its own right and trying to pull it away from looking at India in the context of its various bilateral tensions and looking at it as critical as a security partner and economic partner and opportunity, looking at it as sort of the anchor of stability in what's now called the Indo-Pacific. But that has also tended to reinforce that the US views South Asia as its own construct and East Asia kind of as its own construct. And what we're seeing right now is sort of played out in real life how China for obvious reasons of just geography and its own strategic thinking views Asia as a whole and as its critical sphere of influence for its own interests. And so from the US standpoint, what I think this does is it offers in a way an opportunity for greater strategic alignment with India because Indian perceptions of China and American perceptions of China's ambitions have been largely aligned. If you look to a surprising degree, India has backed up at least at the level of rhetoric statements about a free and open Indo-Pacific. It has shown that its strategy aligns with the US strategy which looks different from what we both think China wants to see in the region, which is sort of a predominant Chinese influence throughout the Indo-Pacific AOR. And India's backed that up with not only the closening of relations that Tanvi was talking about with but also practical cooperation between militaries that ramping up cooperation in the quad and so I think from the US standpoint, it's sort of a, oh look, China has overplayed their hand with India in a way that might accrue to us strategically in terms of what India will be willing to do in this partnership. So I think in the United States, this has been viewed a little bit as China showing its true colors in a way that might be viewed eventually in China as an error for, before the forum started, we were talking about, do we think the Chinese meant to do this? And most of us had a consensus that one, we don't know because the Chinese aren't going to tell us really their version of events, but that it's likely that having pisticuffs lead to fatalities was not probably something the Chinese wanted to have happen. And they're seeing it play out in a pretty dramatic fashion and in ways that align with core US priorities. So China is absolutely out of 5G for India. That's not going to have. TikTok has been banned along with another 59 Chinese apps. And the Indians have shown a willingness to take what will be an economic hit, whether it's in terms of banning low cost imports of things that are consumer staples for a lot of Indian citizens and are inexpensive because they come from China all the way up to bilateral investment in particular the Indian technology sector, but also the canceling of road and rail projects and other things. So to the degree that China has viewed India as a strategic rival and a country it wants to see contained in terms of influence, but also a strategic opportunity at a market in which it wants to have access, that has gotten much more complicated for China. And it's done so in ways that will be viewed in the United States as favorable. For the Indians, one of the big questions is what's the risk of this kind of frostiness with China lasting a long time? In particular, what's the economic risk? And in particular, what's the economic risk coming out of COVID? Because the Indian economy is going to be seriously affected by COVID and in negative growth territory and is coming out of that without China and Chinese investment and Chinese economic integration is that so much more difficult that it really makes it worth it to try to find a way back to at least some more limited openness to Chinese investment. And I think it's interesting because things like Google's announcement of $10 billion of investment in India are coming right at this moment and they're probably giving India a sense of confidence which may or may not play out to be valid but a sense of confidence that there will be substitution, that Japan, Europe, the United States will start filling in some of the opportunities that had been filled by China which is invested over $10 billion in the Indian tech sector, for example. The final area I would say is an interesting one and it's a little complicated. In terms of defense, the US India Strategic Partnership Forum where I advise on aerospace and defense issues was looking at how India is reacting on the border in terms of bolstering some of its equipment and things like that. And the first place India often turns is Russia because they have a lot of Russian systems. So there was a purchase of MiGs and Sukhoi's but you have also seen and the Indian military has seen and talked about the value of the American platforms that have been integrated into their system. So Apache attack helicopters, C-130s and C-17s getting forces up and down. The M-47 artillery which is able to be moved up to high altitudes and the surveillance and information sharing we've gotten from the United States. And I think this really crystallizes that value proposition from a strategic standpoint for the Indians and the United States will be looking to basically show how valuable this is going to be for India, this partnership. Very interesting. Taylor, let me take this opportunity to turn back to you. You wrote a piece in foreign affairs. I believe it was last week that you made an argument that was, I found very interesting. And I'm wondering if you can basically let me know if I understood it correctly. You sort of argued that China's actions are not diversionary. That is to say Xi Jinping is not trying to bolster support at home by being more aggressive towards India for the public's sake. But he might be doing so in the context of elite politics or leadership politics in China. I wonder if you can tell me if I understood that right and if so talk about that a little more and just a related follow on question which is I think in the past you've seen China try to in moments of tension with the United States cultivate better ties with its neighbors. But what we're seeing right now is a moment where there are deep tensions with the United States but also increasingly deep tensions with the neighbors at the same time. So I wonder if you can talk about the degree to which that dynamic, how that dynamic is being understood in China and whether there are some analysts or schools of thought that see that as being ultimately problematic. Great, no, thank you. So yeah, turning first to the kind of diversionary signaling question. I mean, I was struck after the clash on the evening of June 15th, how little attention it received in the Chinese press particularly focusing on the party's main newspaper The People's Daily and then the government's news agency, the Shenzhen news agency because these are sort of authoritative elements of China's news and propaganda system. And what was remarkable was there was no articles in The People's Daily at all I think for the week afterwards. And then on the Xinhua website the story never got above like the 13th place on the homepage, right? And it was always just a perfunctory statement. And so there is basically I concluded no effort to try to mobilize Chinese public opinion around what had happened on the border. And furthermore, there was no effort to do so by revealing information about Chinese casualties as a way that might sort of tie China's hands and lead it to adopt a more sort of a robust response. And so I took all of that to be evidence that this was probably or then the final element would be right that this just suggested China was also trying to sort of maintain some opening with India to pursue some kind of a diplomatic at least not resolution, but disengagement or ceasefire or something to that effect, which is what I think we're seeing being negotiated now. And so that's important. Now the question would be because China did overplay its hand, it did move in three or four places on the border against India simultaneously in early May this was clearly and that part of the operation was clearly was essentially coordinated because you can't move that many troops in the Chinese system without authorization from much higher levels, probably the Central Military Commission and so forth. And so I mean, one idea would be that and it's hard to find hard data for this. So I wanna clarify this is more of a speculation than anything else, but you know, Xi Jinping is under a lot of pressure at the moment. On the one hand, he's in a very strong position, but on the other hand, that means he has more responsibility for when things go wrong. I think he sort of dodged the domestic questions about culpability for coronavirus by putting in place members of the Politburo itself to kind of go to Wuhan and sort the situation out, but nevertheless, in some senses with that, the buck still stopped with him. The really rapid decline of US-China relations which of course has been on the decline for the last several years, but it really sort of accelerated in light of COVID was also a huge political challenge for Xi Jinping and then the economy which also kind of is another issue where the buck stops with him. And so one gets a sense, right? That this is a leader who domestically still needs to show that he is doing well on other issues and sovereignty issues would be one of those areas where he then would believe that China would need to take a strong stand because there's a story that he could tell internally to the degree that he's facing dissent that nevertheless he's kind of making important strides in accomplishments. And so I think that would kind of be the story I would tell. Again, it's hard to get kind of hard data to access that, but I think it does make, you know, I think it's certainly plausible given what we do know and what we've seen with regards to sort of Chinese media and whipping up or not whipping up in this case kind of Chinese public opinion. Now to your second question and this may sort of dovetail with the first one, another just trend we see in China, right? Under Xi is really the centralization of policymaking under Xi, which means that the sort of Chinese interagency process or the Chinese policymaking process where there's sort of wide consultation with all kind of relevant bureaucratic actors before a major decision is made may not always be worked. And this partly could explain some of the assertiveness we've seen, but also suggests that, you know, that China's willing now to basically maintain good relations with its neighbors and to maintain, sorry, maintain bad relations with its neighbors while relations with the U.S. are deteriorating. And historically, right? Chinese grand strategy is always focused on kind of balancing relations among great powers, neighboring countries, and then the developing world. And the idea is you never really wanna have bad relations with two of these three groups of countries. And right now China is precisely in a place where, you know, it's trending downward on all fronts. And so one sort of has to believe eventually, right, that there will be some kind of a course correction. And you certainly see lots of, you know, somewhat indirect and veiled criticisms of the fact that China is in a very turbulent international environment now, among Chinese sort of analysts and experts suggesting that there is an opening for a recalibration or reorientation policy. But on the other hand, if everything is so heavily centralized within Xi Jinping now, and Xi Jinping has a greater appetite for risk for friction, and Xi Jinping thinks that China is sort of strong enough now where it can weather those frictions, we may not see this reorientation. I think when we saw it in the past, China was a weaker country. China was a less capable country, but always still a very strong country with a dominant geography, but nevertheless a country that had to be a bit more judicious about how many sort of poor relationships it would have in its diplomacy, especially because of course, China has no natural allies and lots of neighbors, right? So it has to kind of think carefully about sort of avoiding a counter-balancing coalition. And so I think it's too early to say that China won't recalibrate because perhaps now the costs are really sort of laid out in stark relief, right? This is the first time in 30 years that there have been any deaths in the territorial dispute involving China. And of course, the first time in 40 to 50 years, depending on how one wants to account, that there was deaths on the border with India or a clash of this magnitude, but even more broadly in terms of Chinese diplomacy, this is the first time you've seen a really deadly clash on the border. And that may be something that does sort of underscore the risk. So on the one hand, if Xi might have a greater tolerance for friction in relation with other countries, but at least until now China has tried to keep a lid on that friction below the threshold of armed conflict and that threshold was broken in a very brutal and ghastly way in the Gaoan Valley on the evening of June 15th. Many thanks. So one thing on that, and the past is as Taylor said, we've seen two different ways that China kind of gets itself out of these situations at least. One is a charm offensive with the neighbors. And that kind of helps or stalls that counter-balancing coalition being built. The second has been kind of what people in the region will call a G2, which has come to an understanding with the US. And so one question I've heard from a number of, and not just kind of Indian analysts, but also in Japan and now even in Australia, which is especially after Wang Yi's speech the other day, which is essentially, are they holding out for in the next administration where there'll be some proposal of sorts to have a new type of major power or great power relationship sort of approach, which is, you know, let's not bother about these other things. Let's focus on cooperation and transnational issues on whether it's pandemics, whether it's climate change, and that the US and China can come to some sort of accommodation, whether that's a Biden administration that might be focused on transnational issues or Trump administration that will be kind of drawing down in terms of alliances and comes to a look, spheres of influence world, what's wrong with that sort of approach. So, you know, the question that I am hearing is, is that part of what Beijing sees as the solution to this, that it won't necessarily be the charm offensive. There might be like not much appetite for that, even in the recipient countries, but that the solution will be try to reach an accommodation of sorts with the US. Well, I mean, that's really interesting to think about. It's something I should have mentioned earlier, which is that one consequence of the decline in relations with the US and in some ways it doesn't keep China and check any more in the region. So I think China has concluded that we now have, that it now has very poor relations with the US. If you look at all the speeches being given in the last two weeks, you can understand at least why they would come to that conclusion. And therefore they're sort of less willing or the less incentive to do things, to repair the relationship with that administration they believe is probably unrepairable. So I suspect they are hoping or we'll see what will happen in the election. And certainly, I think we'll view at least the change in administration as an opening of sorts. There's no change in administration. I suspect that they will double down for a much more competitive slog with the United States, which we should all think about how that might unfold because I'm not sure we necessarily thought down the road that far either. So it's a really important point that you raised, Tommy. Yeah, that's really interesting. And I wanna ask another question for Tommy, but also for Vikram and Taylor, if you wanna jump in is thinking about India's options for responding to a more assertive Chinese stance towards India, what are India's options in East Asia? Whether as part of act East or Modi's act East policy or more broadly, I'm thinking is there room for or support for India to act more forcefully or take a more muscular stance on your given set of issues, Taiwan, South China Sea, but more in the political and security arena as a way of putting pressure on China. And is that likely to happen? I think you're gonna see India's focus remain in some ways. And I've seen some commentary that this is not necessarily a good thing for the US, but I think the primary focus for India will be its own AOR, which is the boundary and on the continental side and the maritime zone, the Indian Ocean. But I do think at this point, there is almost a consensus in India that what happens in the kind of East will not stay in the East. And they are concerned about the kind of, some of the kind of, not particularly, China's not gonna come and build artificial islands in the Indian Ocean necessarily, but it's this thing about will it not follow the routes? And so you're starting to see that connection. So you have seen, in India's position with the South China Sea has been fairly kind of clear, which is that it supports kind of freedom of navigation. It has started talking a lot more about why it's not an outsider, so to speak, in the South China Sea, that a lot of its trade goes through there. Actually saying some of the same things that China does about the Indian Ocean. You've also seen it kind of deep in relations with a lot of Southeast Asian countries. And there's a demand for that because India offers options, not the scale that China does of options, but it does offer an alternative. You've seen on the defense and security side, India coordinating a little bit on security assistance because both offered to Indonesia and Vietnam. India has a relationship with Singapore that goes back, a defense relationship that goes back a long way. You're also seeing kind of more willingness to do things in terms of exercises. So you saw in the US, India, Japan, Philippines, group sail through the South China Sea last year. You've seen in India, Singapore, Thailand, maritime exercise now. I think on Taiwan, what you will see is they will still be careful. You're not gonna see India change. It's kind of one China policy, but you do see changes in emphasis. So for example, India doesn't actually now ever say in statements that it doesn't reinforce its one China policy. It hasn't done that for years. Since China changed its position somewhat on Kashmir. And Arunachal Padesh would start claiming more forcefully. So you do see changes in emphasis, and I think you will see on Taiwan, for example, a willingness to do more economically. I think there is a defense, security and intelligence relationship that you will not see visibly. But I think on the economic side, on the social side, you'll see greater connectivity. It has not, we haven't seen an official announcement. It doesn't tend to be announced, but there have been reports that India is gonna send one of its senior officials as ambassador, or kind of the head of its mission in Taiwan. And that's a sign that India is serious about taking these relationships seriously. And it sees Taiwan also as a potentially kind of important economic partner, as it seeks to kind of get some of that investment that Vikram was talking about. So I think you'll see India willing to do more. But I think it's gonna reinforce, maybe accelerate some trends that were already happening. But there will be still some lines that I think India will not cross, because I think there still is that sense that if you cross too many lines, China can cross the lines, your red lines too. But I think you've already seen a certain amount of willingness, whether it is, I think the getting Australia into something like the quad exercise, into a quad exercise, the Malabar exercise, that was gonna happen anyway. It had been signaled back in January. But I think those steps, they'll just be more kind of reinforcing of that. You're seeing Indians openly saying we should allow the US and Japan and Australia to have access to the Andaman Islands. Those kind of things are gonna be different. The other space to watch, international organizations. I think you'll see India coordinating a lot more with kind of like-minded partners to ensure that the Chinese influence there, at least to shape Chinese behavior and limit its influence if they see it as bad for their own interests in these institutions. Great, well, in just a few minutes, we'll move to audience questions, but I wanna send another question to Taylor. There's been some sort of debate about whether sort of aggressive behavior by Chinese troops at the individual or unit level to what can we attribute that cause? Would you, and obviously that has approximate effect on sparking any of these particular standoffs or it can, would you attribute that more to sort of a lack of discipline or professionalism, or would you see it more as part of China's, the way China carries out its military strategy? It's a terrific question, but it's a really hard one to answer because we don't have a lot of insight into what happens at the unit level. I would say, I'll make the following observation, right? One feature of the China-India tensions this spring has been fistfights, right? So there's a brawl, it knocked a lot, a big brawl in Pangong Lake, and then the deadly brawl at Gowon Valley. And so something has happened in the way in which the two, the forces from both sides interacted, they basically seem to have changed the rules of engagement this spring. And I don't know why, but I don't know which side decided to do it first. Excuse me, I mean, there's at least one instance or one story that was published about a junior Indian officer punching a Chinese officer in the face and knock a lot after the Chinese officer insulted the Indian officer's spirit, right? So this is a case where I think on probably both sides there's just been some change in what they sort of think that they can do in sort of face of what they view as transgressions. But on the other hand, if you look at the evening of June 15th, no soldier from either side discharged a weapon, which to me at least reflects a pretty high level of discipline with respect to what had been sort of the broader rules of engagement. And so I suspect to the degree that you are seeing individual units on the Chinese side be aggressive at the very sort of local tactical level that they believe that they are carrying out what they believe to be a lawful or not lawful. What would they believe to be an order from their superior, right? With respect to what they're supposed to do on the border because we've seen it in so many places that I don't think you could ascribe it to sort of the breakdown of discipline among a particular unit because each of these instances in Gowon or Pongam or Habyu are all from different at least border defense regiments with not different main force units. And so this would be not something that one can attribute to sort of the breakdown of discipline in one particular unit. So it's a tough question to answer because we just don't have a lot of insight but I am struck by how this spring in contrast to Deklam or 2013 or 14 where you really didn't have any fistfights. I guess if I take that back in 2007 there was a fistfight in Pongal Lake and that maybe was the first one and maybe that's sort of a sign of how things have changed. And then there are of course all these videos coming out and we don't know exactly when they were filmed or where they were filmed but they do show, I mean, most of them do come from India and they do show Chinese officers misbehaving and acting in what might appear to be in a discipline or a professional manner but there are also a few that show similar things happening with some Indian forces which I just take again to be that there's some change in the rules of engagement that seem to have basically made fistfights somehow permissible in a way that they really had been avoided before and that is an interesting question as to how that sort of came about and why something was not done to sort of arrest that development which clearly had deadly consequences with strategic ramifications and implications. Jake, I just had two things I wanted to flag on tying to both of these. So one is on whether there's opportunity East I think that the, you know, Tanvi's absolutely right. India is gonna need to focus on its neighborhood. In particular, if you look at where, you know boundary disputes were all settled with Bangladesh not very long ago, but there's been a lot of tension over the citizenship bill and the changes potentially the status of longtime residents of India that came from Bangladesh and whether they will become be rendered stateless or what that might lead to. And then Nepal, there's been a sort of acceleration of the territorial dispute there with Nepal being much more assertive. And I think India is going to be worrying about what the Chinese relationship is with all of its neighbors, you know Sri Lanka famously the Hamantota port issue and of course Pakistan which you had asked me about earlier but where the deepening of the China-Pakistan relationship poses a very interesting strategic challenge for India because essentially, you know India's our tribal now has a big body that has deeply integrated into its system and committed to its economic wellbeing and is increasingly vocally taking its side when it comes to, you know who's responsible for what happening in Kashmir and with the line of control with Pakistan. So that, you know the Indians have to be looking at that and saying you know Pakistan seems to have got China into a position of being its muscle behind it on these issues. And so all of that mitigates towards India focusing on its own region. On the Eastern friendly countries and the ASEAN countries and others there's no doubt you'll keep having really good Indian ties to those countries One interesting thing is how those countries view India's response to Chinese aggression and how they interpret Chinese willingness to go to deadly force even with a major power like India and whether there's a signaling impact of China's actions vis-a-vis India on the claimants in the South China Sea and others all the way around to Taiwan and what the Chinese are thinking about what that impact could be. So, and I think in that sense solidarity between India and other countries who face similar assertiveness from China is an area of opportunity. And I expect that the Indians will try to continue or at least build on what they've done with ASEAN, with the Quad and with others even if they're mostly focused in the immediate area in their immediate neighborhood. Yeah, thank you. That's a great point. We just have a few minutes left here. So I want to get in a question from the audience. We've had a couple of questions related to sort of Russia's role. So I wonder if I can kick it to Taylor to talk about quickly about the Sino-Russian relationship and basically are the Chinese or might the Chinese be leaning on the Russians to be quiet about this, right? Or to, and more broadly to restrain or roll back their relationship with India and for Tanvi and Vikram, what are the Indians doing to maintain that relationship and to what extent are they sort of willing to let Russia fall more into kind of the Chinese camp and substitute U.S. or other maybe Quad or Western partners in response? So maybe Taylor first. Sure, yeah, I'll try to keep it brief. I think the China-Russia relationship, people debate whether it's a proto alliance or something else. I'm a bit more skeptical as to how deep it will evolve. But clearly they have lots of common interests which they pursue, but they have lots of points of friction. So for example, Russia sells kilo submarines to Vietnam and obviously arms India quite well in many areas. And so that hasn't, those relationships, which of course predate what happened on the border this year, haven't really prevented the flowering or the blooming as it were of Russia-China relationships in the past decade. And so I think, yeah, they're very happy to identify areas of cooperation and common interests and to pursue them aggressively. I think that there's a sense that they don't try necessarily to get too involved in those areas where their interests may not be fully aligned. And I think China moreover wants to probably handle India without any Russian help and to basically not be seen as somehow a reliance on another country to deal with its territory. And there's of course also a long history of kind of Russia or the Soviet Union's involvement in the China-India border that we don't have time to go into, but it's quite interesting as well. But I'll leave it there just so we have time to get the others in. So I think in some ways, India would like to see those areas of friction between China and Russia increase and the areas of cooperation be limited. They have found the Russians, the Indians want a good relationship with Russia for at least three reasons in the China context. One, they do believe they think the China and Russia will eventually split just as they did in the Cold War. And whenever there's an assino-Soviet split, it has benefited India. When the two countries have been close to each other, that has not been good for India. And so India hopes and it keeps appealing to the West that you need to make up with Russia if you're focusing on China. And they don't tend to understand American or Western concerns about what Russia's been doing as much because that's just not their priority, I guess. Second, it remains, Russia remains a key source of military equipment, spare parts, but also certain technology that only the Russians will supply India. So one question for other countries in kind of the West in particular is, are they willing to kind of pick up the slack there? Because the Russians do offer that as a comparative. This is why you saw in the Indian Defense Minister goal to Russia. And then finally, another aspect, which is India wants to keep Russia on side. So you don't want, Russia can do in Indian interest a lot of harm. If for example, they collaborate much more strongly with China and international institutions, whether that's the UN Security Council or they can be very unhelpful to India at the bricks in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Very quickly, there are however Indian concerns, which I think sometimes are not appreciated enough about Russia, partly because the Indians never talk about it publicly. And that includes, and I think top most of that list is the fact that the Sino-Russian relationship is not just close, but in recent years has been growing, particularly in the defense and technology space. That has implications for India and since it's still buying these things. Second, they noticed the Russians have not been supportive publicly of the Indian stance. They have talked about respecting Chinese sovereignty and respecting Indian sovereignty. And I think you see that the kind of Indians have, I think, let's see, they've signed these deals. Let's see how long the Russians take to deliver some of these things. Because they don't necessarily turn the tap off because the Russians have no interest in kind of driving India into US arms entirely. The Russians have not in the past when it's come to China-India situations, is that they just stop, they stall on supply. And so let's see how it plays out. But I think you'll see India continue to maintain that relationship. My only argument has been is that India should then ask the same questions of Russia that it does any other partner, which is how is that constraining India's options and what is it doing to India's strategic landscape? All right, Vikram, do you have anything that you wanna add briefly on that? I mean, it's hard to top Tanvi and Taylor. And I think she's exactly right. I think the key point is that vis-a-vis Russia, I don't think the Indians, it is less a strategic partnership than it used to be. It is much more a partnership based on the economics of defense cooperation and the legacy of India having built all of its strategic systems on Russian systems. You don't quickly get a new nuclear submarine, you don't quickly change your missile architectures, you don't quickly alter those things. And so India's case to Western partners is, look, this is what we have and this is gonna take, this would be years and years before it went away. And I think you don't see Russia backing India up the way the United States and a lot of its Western friends, Israel, France, other countries are willing to back India up when it comes to what's happening on its borders. And that sort of shows the trajectory overall, it's just more in this direction. Great, and there's so much more to talk about on these subjects, but we'll have to wrap it up there as we're out of time. Thank you very much to the panelists for sharing their insights with us. Be sure to check out Tomby's and Taylor's books for more of a lot of good information in there and very well written as well. Goodbye to everyone and stay safe. Thanks again. Thank you.